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Mass Psychosis as a Pastoral Concern

9/24/2010

Last week I had dinner with a friend who had taught sociology for many years at a major state university. I told him I had just finished reading a book by David Remnick called "The Bridge" on "The Life and Rise of Barack Obama." I said that all those Tea Party folks ought to read the book to see where Obama came from, how he has throughout his life been a conciliator, one who wants to listen to those with different views from himself. But I said that I didn't believe Obama could be the "bridge" between the opposing views in today's political and cultural wars, he wasn't going to be an historical "bridge" to a non-partisan future that he wants to be. His belief that there is no red America and blue America blinded him to the strength of right-wing, racist conservatism in the country. He may end up being the last liberal president, the last president who believed that if people just sat down and talked rationally with one another everything would be all right.

My friend agreed and said the country was in the grip of a "mass psychosis". I have been thinking about that phrase. Psychosis can be defined as "a loss of contact with reality, usually including false
ideas about what is taking place or who one is (delusions) and seeing or hearing things that aren't there (hallucinations)." A psychotic person cannot make good decisions based on what is actually out there in reality, his or her internal conscious life is so severely distorted that his or her actions can result in damage to himself or herself, perhaps destruction.

Any pastor who discovered that a member of the congregation was on the edge of psychosis would try to do whatever is necessary to help the person avoid descent into that terrible state. But what of psychosis on a societal level? Government can be understood to some degree as the "brain" of society, the means by which a society sees reality and decides to act in relation to that reality. Politics in a democracy is the means used to establish who will run the government. But what happens when a political movement comes along which is actually itself psychotic, that is, out of contact with reality to such a degree that it sees things that are not there, so paranoid that it makes up enemies who don't exist, so fearful that it acts in ways that lead only to severe damage and destruction?

Pastors hesitate to become involved in politics, they are like Barack Obama, trying to see all sides, keep everyone united in the family. But if a member of the family becomes psychotic we should not start running the family on the basis of this person's opinions. In the same way, if a political movement becomes psychotic we should not remain quiet or claim that everyone has the right to their own opinion. I think pastors, especially pastors in the mainline denominations, need to begin to really very seriously think about this and realize that we have a practical pastoral ministry today concerning politics. That is especially so since a major element of political irrationality has been introduced by right-wing religion calling itself "Christian." Protestant pastors today have a real responsibility to stand up and address these issues head on. Great damage to the public life of this nation, and the world, is being done by a false form of Christianity, the so-called religious right, which is really an Americanized, commercialized, so-called anti-modernist form of religion which no longer represents the authentic Reformation heritage.

This religious-right is now hiding inside what is called the "Tea Party" movement as if this is something new. There has now been a coming together of this religious right with libertarianism and neoconservatism, all three of which have hysterical views of the world outside of reality. And this has all become what we should call "extreme" in the sense of about ready to take the country over the edge of a cliff. If you don't believe this take a look at an article I just placed on this website by Max Blumenthal. I have read his book Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party. Blumenthal provides an outstanding analysis based to some degree on the views of the psychiatrist Erich Fromm in his book Escape from Freedom, a study of authoritarian psychology. The latest Blumenthal article is a quick summary of Tea Party activities, where Glenn Beck gets his ideas, and demonstrates why we are able to call the Tea Party movement "psychotic," disconnected from reality. It is promoting what we can legitimately call a "mass psychosis."

At this website I am trying to think about these matters. I use the term "public consciousness" for example. The media play a huge role today in creating and manipulating the public consciousness, and one major network, for purposes of private profit, is promoting pychosis in the public consciousness. A large element in all this is the continuing energy of the backlash against the 1960s and the gains of the civil rights movement. Civil rights workers were called socialists and Communists by white people in the South, just as major Republican leaders (especially those with Southern roots) today are willing to call Obama a socialist and a Communist and associating anything government does with the word socialism. If you strip away the explicitly racist language Republican leaders today sound just like George Wallace and the John Birch Society.

These are now matters of life and death, matters of real pastoral concern. The language being used in politics today by the so-called Tea Party movement is a rhetoric of death. Pastors know something about death, it is time for all of us to find practical ways in daily ministry to explicity address the reality of mass psychosis.